Startup Weekend will be held for the first time on Prince Edward Next weekend, one of three of the collaborative weekend events to take place in Atlantic Canada in the next two months.

Startup Weekend events have been held in more than 100 countries and several Atlantic Canadian cities but the one on May 1 to 3 will be the first in Charlottetown. The event at PEI Farm Centre is titled the Food and Farm Edition of Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekend, an international organization based in Seattle, encourages entrepreneurship by staging 54-hour competitions around the world. People turn up on a Friday night and present their business ideas. Teams form around the best ideas and spend the weekend building the business, ideally producing a barebones product by the time they make a pitch to a panel of judges on Sunday evening.

“Our event is themed Food and Farm with the aim of collaboration centered on rural innovation,” said Arleigh Hudson, the lead organizer of the Charlottetown event.

“We need jobs in P.E.I. and creating excitement by tapping into the global network of Startup Weekend will hopefully help people find a way to work and live at home, nearby family and friends.”

Meanwhile, there will also be Startup Weekends held in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador in the coming weeks.

"Startup Weekend is all over the world from Tehran to China to Malaysia, and it's incredible to finally see Startup Weekend in all four Atlantic Provinces," said Sally Ng, the Executive Director of Planet Hatch in Fredericton. Ng has been the facilitator of Startup Weekends around the world, and will hold that position at the events in Charlottetown and St. John’s.

Startup Weekend NL will be held at College of the North Atlantic’s Prince Philip Drive Campus on June 12 to 14.

The Fredericton edition of Startup Weekend NB will take place this weekend (April 24-26) at Planet Hatch.